Discovery services the healthcare funding and insurance markets in South Africa, the United Kingdom, United States of America, China, Australia and Singapore. MMI was formed from the merger of Metropolitan and Momentum, focusing on long-term insurance, short-term insurance, asset management, healthcare administration and employee benefits. OUTsurance is a direct personal lines and small business short-term insurer and has also expanded into Australia and New Zealand under the Youi brand. RMI Investment Managers continues to build out its portfolio of affiliate asset managers as it looks to identify, partner and grow world-class asset managers, while Merchant Capital is launching new products and partnerships to further entrench itself into the SME segment. Hastings is a UK-listed short-term insurer.

RMI’s headline earnings for the year ended 30 June 2018 increased by 19% to R4 081 million (2017: R3 441 million). However, RMI believes that normalised earnings more accurately reflect operational performance, and therefore headline earnings are adjusted to take into account non-recurring items and accounting anomalies. RMI’s normalised earnings for the year under review increased by 15% to R4 473 million (2017: R3 897 million).

Discovery’s contribution to normalised earnings increased by 16% to R1 356 million (2017: R1 167 million). The increase was driven by a 9% increase in net insurance premium revenue to R32.3 billion. Total new business annualised premium income increased by 10% to R16.1 billion.

Hastings posted strong results and continued profitable growth in a competitive market, with gross written premiums increasing by 5% and net revenue by 9%. It contributed R778 million (4 months ended 30 June 2017: R246 million) to RMI’s normalised earnings.

MMI Holdings’ contribution to RMI’s normalised headline earnings amounted to R715 million (2017: R816 million). The decreased contribution is due to the continued challenging macro-economic environment and operational shortcomings in the Momentum and Metropolitan retail divisions.

The normalised earnings contribution from OUTsurance increased by 27% to R2 661 million (2017: R2 103 million), mainly due to favourable claims conditions throughout all major operations and higher associate earnings from its indirect interest in Hastings.